Rate My Professor Simon Overall

Dr Simon Overall is a Senior Lecturer in the English and Linguistics programme at the University of Otago, within the Division of Humanities. He holds a BA and MA from the University of Auckland and a PhD from La Trobe University. Previously affiliated with the Language and Culture Research Centre at James Cook University, Overall's research focuses on the descriptive linguistics of Amazonian and Andean languages, particularly those of northwest Peru. He has conducted extensive fieldwork on Aguaruna, known to speakers as Iiniá Chicham, a Chicham language spoken by about 55,000 people in Peru's Amazonas and Loreto regions, and on Kandozi-Chapra, also known as Candoshi-Shapra, an isolate spoken on the Morona and Pastaza rivers in Loreto. His work examines historical connections between Amazonian and Andean languages, grammatical description, and how language structures express individual and cultural knowledge, including nominalisation in discourse, subordination, switch-reference, and diachronic language change processes.

Overall has published extensively on these languages, including 'Non-verbal predication in Chicham' (2026) in Non-verbal predication in the World’s languages and 'Negation in Aguaruna' (2025) in Negation in the world's languages III. Other key publications include 'Object symmetry and Differential Object Marking in Jivaroan languages' (with Martin Kohlberger), 'The rise of evidentiality? Nominalization as a marker of non-firsthand information source in Aguaruna (Jivaroan)', and contributions to The grammar of knowledge: A cross-linguistic typology. His scholarship has garnered over 399 citations on Google Scholar, contributing significantly to typology, field linguistics, and documentation of under-described languages. At Otago, he teaches LING 111: A World of Languages, LING 217: What's Behind Language: Sound and Structure, LING 314: Comparative Morphosyntax, and LING 424: Linguistic Fieldwork. He coordinates postgraduate enquiries for Linguistics, serves on the Humanities Research Committee as a research adviser, and delivers seminars such as on Awajún grammar reflecting cultural perspectives.